Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

November 25, 2013
In this sprawling, somewhat bloated study, music historian Brothers picks up where his Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans leaves off, following Armstrong through his most formative decade, from 1922–1932. On Aug. 8, 1922, Armstrong boarded a train in New Orleans bound for Chicago to join King Oliver’s band and start over. Combining his love of blues with jazz, Armstrong developed both as a vocalist who understood harmony and as a strong trumpeter whose “command of tone, quick fingers, and high-note playing created a new melodic idiom” that set him apart from other musicians. Brothers conducts us on a journey with Armstrong as he builds a following in Chicago; marries his first wife, the pianist Lillian Harden; and moves away from Oliver’s band, creating his own distinct sound in the clubs of Harlem in New York City, making five “hot records,” including “Muskrat Ramble,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” and “Heebie Jeebies.” Although Terry Teachout’s Pops remains the definitive biography of Armstrong, Brothers’s book shows how Armstrong achieved a sort of godlike status among black audiences while bridging the racial gap to attract white audiences with his singing.

Starred review from November 15, 2013
The author of Louis Armstrong's New Orleans (2006) continues his stellar account of the great trumpeter's life (1901-1971), focusing on the 1920s and '30s. Brothers (Music/Duke Univ.), who has also edited a collection of Armstrong's prose (Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words, 1999), composes a multilayered work comprising biography, cultural and racial history, and musicology. The author begins in 1931 (Armstrong was on tour), showing us two principal themes that will reappear throughout the work: Armstrong's artistry and American racism. Brothers then takes us back to 1922 (Armstrong was on his way to Chicago and a new musical life) and marches steadily forward, more or less, to the 1930s, when Armstrong, a major musical star, participated in some degrading roles in motion pictures--performances that sullied his reputation. The author also examines Armstrong's complicated love life (he'd been married three times by book's end) and his fondness for marijuana (he smoked it throughout his adult life--spent some time in jail in 1931), his relationships with fellow musicians and managers and even the Chicago mob (Capone liked him). Brothers introduces us to Armstrong's musical mentors (King Oliver was a major one), takes us along on Armstrong's tours, into the OKeh recording studios (he eventually moved to RCA Victor), and describes the neighborhoods he lived in and the clubs he played. We learn about the advent of the microphone, the primitive recording conditions, the celebrity Armstrong earned from records--but even more from his radio appearances. We see Armstrong, the singer, the cornetist (and, later, trumpeter), the dancer, the comedian and the artist nonpareil (Brothers rhapsodizes about his technique, his upper range). The text becomes dense for general readers only when Brothers waxes analytical about particular songs, recordings and techniques. A masterful performance that displays the author's vast archival research, musical knowledge, familiarity with cultural history and profound sensitivity to America's vile racial history.

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Starred review from November 15, 2013
Jazz fans have been blessed in 2013 with two exceptional biographies, Stanley Crouch's Kansas City Lightning (the first volume in his life of Charlie Parker) and Terry Teachout's Duke. That pair is now joined by Brothers' monumental follow-up to Louis Armstrong's New Orleans (2006). The focus here is on Armstrong's most fertile period as an instrumental and vocal innovatorin Brothers' convincing argument, a modernistfrom his youthful arrival in Chicago in 1922 to join Joe King Oliver through the years of the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (culminating, sadly, with the degrading movies of the early 1930s). The strong emphasis, properly, is on the music, with Armstrong's personal life (his marriage, his eccentricities, his marijuana use) handled only superficially. This is an enormously rich, if sometimes difficult, biography, and it delivers a remarkably clear and knowing discussion of a new musical form rooted in African music and the blues. Although his book is not for those unfamiliar with jazz, Brothers does note, after a particularly dense explication, that the listener does not need this all spelled out . . . for the ear will recognize it effortlessly and unconsciously. True, but this biography provides an illuminating accompaniment. There has been much written on Armstrong, but Brothers' work, covering an astonishingly creative decade, is comprehensive and firmly grounded in musicology and in the racial and cultural climate of the 1920s. It is voluminously researched, compellingly written, and supported by a valuable discography and bibliography. A bravura accomplishment, soon to be followed, one hopes, by a third volume covering Armstrong's role in midcentury popular music.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)